Toys

guns.

The Elite doctors were rooted in shock. I pushed them aside and went for the guards, who were already clawing for their pistols. Fortunately, the room was full of equipment, including several monitors on stands.

As I lunged forward, I wrenched one free and swung it like a mace. I took out both guards before they could administer a “fast death” with their guns.

Alarms were shrieking and strobes were flashing all over the building by now. I could hear footsteps pounding down the hallway.

I grabbed a doctor by the neck-the one who’d never wasted his time learning human medicine-and held him in front of me as a shield.

“One more step and I start throwing around his body parts,” I yelled at the approaching security team. “And, yes, I’m completely serious about it, and I’m capable. I’m human, right?”

I backed down the hallway to where it turned. I swung the doctor horizontally, then I sprinted toward the front of the building. Now I was using him like a battering ram to crash through everything and everyone in my way.

Carts went flying, gurneys were overturned, wide-eyed, shrieking nurses leaped back against the walls to avoid being trampled.

Still holding on to my screeching hostage, I bounded down an escalator to the lower level. Next, I burst into the cafeteria’s kitchen, where blank-faced robot workers tended the huge, metallic complex, churning out no-cal grub that was also virtually no-taste.

As I raced through, I dropped the doc into a bin of scraps. I caught a glimpse of his bulging-eyed face as he flopped around in the rank garbage.

“That’ll teach you to call me a skunk,” I told him.

Then I charged out through a loading-dock door into an alley-and, hopefully, the freedom of the night.

Unfortunately, I thought, maybe I am a skunk.

Chapter 25

The cool, fresh night air quickly filled my lungs and began to dry the fevered hospital sweat off my skin. Adrenaline was keeping the pain at bay, and running was stretching and loosening my traumatized body.

Before long, I was pounding along the pavement at close to my top speed, fifty miles an hour.

I had to see my daughters and my wife-hold them in my arms, tell them I loved them, try to explain that whatever wicked stories they might hear weren’t true. Or, at least, that there had to be some reasonable explanation for the mix-up.

No matter what else, I wasn’t a traitor. That much I was certain of.

Our apartment wasn’t far from the hospital; I reached the building in less than ten minutes.

Suddenly, I was very nervous and apprehensive.

I paused to listen for sounds of pursuit, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Not so far, anyway. The side-door entrance recognized my bioprint and opened on contact. The police probably figured this would be the last place I’d go right now. I hoped so.

Was it possible that Lizbeth had turned on me as totally as Jax Moore said she had? Or was he lying-another part of this insanity? But why would he lie to me?

This time, when Metallico answered the apartment door, there was no robo-rap music playing, or sounds of any kind. The place felt empty. The air smelled strongly of antiseptic, and there were cleaning materials left out all over the living room.

“Hello, Hays,” Metallico said. “I’m afraid I can’t invite you in. Sorry about that.”

His tone was flat and neutral, and he seemed downright stiff-like an ordinary android instead of his usual sassy self.

“This is my house. You work here. What do you mean you can’t invite me in?”

“The apartment is being decontaminated.”

“Where are they?” I demanded. “Lizbeth? The girls? I need to know. Right now, Metallico! I’m not in the mood for games.”

“I’m not at liberty to say. That’s final.”

I groaned. This was going nowhere fast, and I was pretty sure this unfaithful robot had already sounded the emergency alarm. Indeed, my hearing picked up the sound of fast-approaching airborne cars-and a couple more vehicles stopping on the streets below. I suppose I should have expected as much.

I rammed the heel of my hand into the robot’s silicone chest, sending him spinning across the room. Metallico crashed into a wall with a bright flash as his circuits collapsed and shorted him out.

“Take that, you treacherous vacuum cleaner!” I said, standing over his crumpled body.

Next, I peeled the silicone skin off the back of his bulb-shaped head. I quickly removed his short-term- memory chip, grabbed my backup PDA from the drawer in the desk in the hall, and dumped the chip’s data into it.

“Grandmere,” I said, sighing. Of course. Lizbeth had taken the kids to her mother’s house in the suburbs. Where else?

Grandmere was an aging, but still beautiful, lady with an icy charm and a keen sense of social class. Only the best of the Elites were good enough for her.

Once upon a time, that had meant me, but no more. And, probably, never again.

Dammit though, I missed my family. Didn’t that alone prove I was Elite?

Chapter 26

No time for such sentimentality. The Agency commandos would be up here in seconds, heavily armed, ready to kill me if they had to. I was fairly certain the luxury building was already surrounded. So I ran to the back of the apartment and threw open the balcony door. Sure enough, police vehicles were already circling in the air and barricading escape routes on the ground. They wanted me-badly.

Spotlights flared suddenly. A voice boomed, “Stop where you are, Hays Baker! Down on your belly and spread your arms and legs!”

I’d spent time on the other side of those spotlights, and I knew the weapons that went with them-stun guns that would paralyze me if they were determined to keep me alive. Or lasers that would turn me into a six-foot-two cinder.

Question was-did they want to keep up this charade of pretending I was a skunk who needed to be brought in and interrogated?

I dove sideways to the neighboring balcony, twenty yards away, caught its lower rim, and swung myself down to the floor below.

The searchlights followed, and then bursts of laser fire hissed around me.

Well, that question was answered anyway. I was obviously wanted-dead or alive.

I went from balcony to balcony, flipping and twisting like a monkey dodging poison darts. Only the poison darts were traveling at the speed of light and punching three-inch-wide gashes in the concrete walls. Also, if I’d actually been a monkey, I’d have already lost my tail-one of the blasts came so close that it set the trailing edge of my hospital gown on fire.

I didn’t bother swatting it out. No time for that. Instead, I plunged headfirst toward the dark, roiling surface of the lake below. A blitz of searchlights and laser flashes followed me, but I somehow sliced into the cold water.

One good thing to be said for a 110-foot dive from a high-rise into a North American lake in the early summer: the freezing cold water quickly takes your attention away from the sting of slamming into the lake’s